John Abercrombie Quotes

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

I'm really maturing into soul music. It's not my attempt or karaoke try. I feel like I really embody the music now that I am 36.

There's been a progression in my sound.

Songs are really interesting in that way. Sometimes, they grow with you. Sometimes, you outgrow them.

As you grow older, your music begins to mature and grow older along with you.

I never left music, I just left the music scene.

I think it took me until - my twenties were really a time of exploration and experimentation with different groups and different types of music. Then I kind of developed the sound, which first appeared, I guess, on my first solo album 'Englaborn,' which came out in 2001.

You could say, 'Oh, we're gonna write the heaviest album of all time' or 'We're gonna write an album that sounds like 'Iowa.'' Even if we set out to try to do so, it would never compare. We're not those people anymore, we're not that band anymore.

We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right.

I don't think I listen to anything that I did when I was 17. I've changed a great deal.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

My first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing. I was rolling with the punches because everything was new to me.

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

There are a lot of people holding on to the old Jessie J - whatever that means - but I think there's a lot more people realizing what I'm about. I think people like it.

I came to singing organically.

When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

Most good things happen with time; especially music, which needs time to breathe and to find its own way.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

Nirvana is next level. The songs are really cool to connect with on a more mature level, and I don't think I really understood that when I was 15.

It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.